Jacinta Allan asked to address lack of project funding for Geelong
Jacinta Allan was quiet on Friday as to why her government ignored pleas from Geelong advocacy groups for specific project funding.
Geelong
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Premier Jacinta Allan is keeping quiet on why her government ignored funding pleas from Geelong advocacy groups, opting to laud the state budget’s benefits to the region instead.
During a visit to Geelong Foodshare on Friday morning, Ms Allan said the government undertook consultation with the region’s stakeholders ahead of Tuesday’s budget, but did not elaborate on what came of them.
“Out of respect to those organisations and groups I’ve met with, I won’t necessarily run a commentary through the media about those discussions,” she said.
“Other than to say I’m very familiar with the work that we’re doing on a number of different fronts.”
Local advocacy groups called for funding for the Avalon precinct and for forgotten projects such as Geelong fast rail, but these pleas went unanswered.
Ms Allan went on to spruik the funds set aside for the region.
“I really look forward to continuing to work with our great, strong, hard working advocates in (Lara MP) Ella (George) and (Bellarine MP) Alison (Marchant), who are strong representatives of Geelong,” she said.
The premier was in town alongside Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio, Ms George and Ms Marchant to promote a $6m investment across six regional Foodshares.
Geelong Foodshare chief executive Andrew Schauble welcomed the funding, which he said would assist the organisation with operating costs for two years.
“To provide operational funding is really important,” he said.
“Because ultimately we do raise a lot of money as well for equipment and other support, but really we need to keep the lights on, we need to keep the freezers running, we need to keep supporting our volunteers with safety measures and good staff to actually help us keep everyone safe.”
Mr Schauble said the organisation was “in the business of going out of business”.
“Unfortunately, that’s not the case,” he said.
“We do see that the need keeps increasing, we want to work with other groups and again that’s why we see it’s important to use food as the starting point.”
The demand for its services has spiked significantly as cost of living pressures stretch household budgets.
“This year we’ve seen it go up again,” Mr Schauble said.
“So it’s a real challenge, and we’re finding a lot of people are making choices between heating, feeding their kids and other things.”
Originally published as Jacinta Allan asked to address lack of project funding for Geelong
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